Desperate times call for desperate solutions, and the family in this engrossing saga confronts plenty of both. At the end of World War II, identical twin boys are born to a single mother in a small town in Mississippi, and it is against a backdrop of isolation, pain, and poverty that the boys' lives are shaped. The twins are separated early on-- the minutes-older son heads toward political success in New York while the other bears witness to injustice, racial tension, and a heinous family crime. Years later, as the presidential campaign of the elder reaches its height, the brothers are forced back together, each unaware of the other' s travails. Now far removed from their familial bond, they prepare for an inexorable final battle of wills.